THE 8th ARMY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 63, Issue 220, 28 June 1943, Page 3

THE Bth ARMY.

WITHDRAWAL TO SYRIA. MOVE REPORTED BY GERMANS. LONDON, June 25. German military authorities informed Swedish correspondents in Beilin that the British Sth Army had been withdrawn from North Africa and sent to Syria, where the British 9th and 10th Armies were also concentrated.

The Germans added that American troops have also been sent to Syria and that new American troops have replaced the British forces withdrawn from North Africa.

“The belligerents are shrouding coming events in an artificial fog,” said Goebbels in an article in “Das Reich,” according to the Berlin radio. “The British, parthicularly, are carrying out a war of nerves in a fruitless attempt to confuse Germany and divert her from her plans. Britain and America have enough shipping tonnage and fighting forces to land at some given point in Europe, hut they could not take Germany by surprise. 'The British thesis that Germany can be overpowered by air power alone is entirely groundless. “Germany would welcome an attempt at invasion, which may well he the prelude to a decisive stage of the Avar. The British are overrating the success of their air war and underrating Germany’s effort and success under total war.”

General Smuts, speaking at Johannesburg, said he knew now that the Allies could Avin, but also that Avinning might mean some of the heaviest land fighting of the Avhole war. Even if desperate Nazi and Fascist leaders had lost all hope of victory, as probably they had, they Avould continue to fight for a state of universal exhaustion and the stalemate of a compromise peace .